Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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have your foundations achieved. He knew he must not leave university until he
had succeeded.
She adds that in the mid-70s, “New Zealanders, anyone who wanted to go into film, had
to create their own portfolio of commitment to the task. That’s terribly important and
that’s a great instinct of Vincent to take five years. No-one now would think of leaving
an institution until they’d had five years”. 273
Maurice Askew, principal lecturer in Moving Image, was the founder of the Moving
Image Department at Ilam. He was an Englishman who had spent a number of years in
British television, and had eventually become the Head of the Design Department at
Granada Television, having started at Granada in 1955, when a number of areas in
Britain were starting to set up their own independent television channels. Initially he
was offered a job as Head of Graphic Design at Ilam for three years, but he gained
tenure and ended up staying there until he retired. Askew was a pioneer in film
education, like Robert Hutchins at the Elam School of Fine Arts at Auckland
University. They were among the very first to teach filmmaking at tertiary level and
faced many problems, including institutional suspicion of the new subject and a lack of
resources.
While Askew deserves credit as a pioneer, however, his skills could not cover all
aspects of the course. He describes the beginnings of the Moving Image Department as
being entirely unplanned:
I was never trained as a cameraman, but after about three or four years, we
started using a Berlitz camera. Gradually more and more people were using it,
so we bought another Berlitz and it was a natural thing to break away to set up a
Moving Image Department, and that’s how it started. And another lecturer came
out to do graphics and another lecturer came out to do photography. So I was
running the Moving Image Department from the word go.
273 Lynette Read, interview with Stephanie Beth, 26 January 1999.